Column: Two-year-old has to potty train parent

By Jon Dawson / Columnist

Published: Wednesday, February 27, 2013 at 09:49 PM.

I stood up to see if I still had functionality in any of my limbs, and in doing so knocked a wash cloth on the floor. The cloth was still damp from the bath, so on a whim I balled it up and tickled the top TD 2’s foot with it. Miracle of miracles, the floodgates opened and the drought was over.

Feeling prideful that I was a good parent or at least still more stubborn than my offspring, I went outside to get some fresh air. I stood at the edge of my carport and gazed at the stars that had decided to make an appearance after a few hours of rain.

It was pitch dark outside, but the breeze blowing through the trees was comforting. After a good minute or so of this, what sounded like 17 deer galloped through the tiny pond that formed at the edge of my yard.

Hearing those deer thunder through the yard with such violence and then burst into the woods as if a repo man was after their schnoinkels did more than break my contemplative mood … it honestly nearly scared me to death. Also, it pretty much undid the previous 40 years of potty training I’d undergone. In an instant, I went from semi-pro to T-ball.

Maybe TD 2 can help me get my mojo back. The student has become the master.

Jon Dawson’s columns appear every Tuesday and Thursday in The Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or jon.dawson@kinston.com. Purchase music, books and spandex lingerie at jondawson.com.

Have you ever tried to teach a squirrel how to knit? I’m guessing it’s easier than potty-training a 2-year-old.

I love my children and thank God for them daily, but every year around tax season my love for them reaches a fever pitch. Tax Deduction No. 1 and Tax Deduction No. 2 just seem a little bit cuter when we get to their section on the ol’ 1040. I was so happy about it this year I let them stay in the house rent free for an entire week.

Along with the federally mandated financial benefits of having children, there are also occasions that make you think the life of a monk might not be all that horrible. Monks all wear the same clothes, so there’s no pressure to keep up with fashion. Every monk I’ve ever seen in a movie has a shaved head, so you don’t have to worry about going bald.

I’m also pretty sure most monks didn’t spend nearly two hours of their Monday night in a bathroom trying to potty-train a child that’s more stubborn than a pack of mules refusing to use email.

Around Thanksgiving, we’d actually strung a few potty successes together with TD 2, but by Christmas she was off the program. At the beginning of the process, a small bribe of a solitary Sweet Tart would get her to sit on the apparatus without a knife fight.

The dangled reward of another solitary Sweet Tart was usually enough to get the proper gears and pipes to present the product we needed. Apparently the kid has integrity, because as soon as she discovered she was being bribed, she shut the whole project down.

Over the last month, we’ve reorganized our efforts to get this kid in line with the water closet. To describe TD 2’s attitude towards this new campaign as unenthusiastic would be an understatement of Herculean proportions. There has been much pulling of hair and gnashing of baby teeth over this potty situation.

If you take incident reports from local law enforcement at face value, you’d be led to believe this kid threw a television at me in protest. Bottom line: She ain’t happy about it.

I’m happy to report that we’ve successfully worked through TD 2’s anger issues, which leaves us with our last obstacle — her stubbornness. She’ll sit on the old loo without a fuss, but that’s all she’ll do — sit. That’s only one letter away from what needs to happen, but it might as well be the entire alphabet.

On Monday night TD 1 (8 years of age) convinced TD 2 (nearly 3 years of age) to sit on the potty. A lollipop may or may not have been used to entice cooperation, but either way it got done. After 10 minutes, I popped in to make sure everyone was still alive, which they were.

Another 10 minutes went by and I checked in to find TD 1 and The Wife now holding vigil around TD 2. Wanting to help, I sat on the edge of the tub and joined in the festivities.

I don’t know how many families as a whole spend a large chunk of time together in the bathroom, but I’m hoping it counts as bankable penance. You haven’t lived till you’ve sat on the edge of a tub for the majority of an evening waiting for a kid whose teeth are by this time swimming to just let it go.

If it were the good old days when we were on the well system, I would have turned on the faucet for a little encouragement. Someone in the room — not me — floated the idea of the “hand in warm water” trick, but knowing our luck, if it worked the kid would insist on using that method until she was 46.

Around the one hour mark, it was just me and TD 2. I fetched my laptop and pulled up some Three Stooges clips on the internet, thinking laughter might shake something loose. She laughed as expected but kept all the machinery on lock-down.

I stood up to see if I still had functionality in any of my limbs, and in doing so knocked a wash cloth on the floor. The cloth was still damp from the bath, so on a whim I balled it up and tickled the top TD 2’s foot with it. Miracle of miracles, the floodgates opened and the drought was over.

Feeling prideful that I was a good parent or at least still more stubborn than my offspring, I went outside to get some fresh air. I stood at the edge of my carport and gazed at the stars that had decided to make an appearance after a few hours of rain.

It was pitch dark outside, but the breeze blowing through the trees was comforting. After a good minute or so of this, what sounded like 17 deer galloped through the tiny pond that formed at the edge of my yard.

Hearing those deer thunder through the yard with such violence and then burst into the woods as if a repo man was after their schnoinkels did more than break my contemplative mood … it honestly nearly scared me to death. Also, it pretty much undid the previous 40 years of potty training I’d undergone. In an instant, I went from semi-pro to T-ball.

Maybe TD 2 can help me get my mojo back. The student has become the master.

Jon Dawson’s columns appear every Tuesday and Thursday in The Free Press. Contact Jon at 252-559-1092 or jon.dawson@kinston.com. Purchase music, books and spandex lingerie at jondawson.com.